한국은 어떻게? How South Korea did it

"한국은 어떻게 그렇게 했을까?"

 

뉴욕 타임즈의 2020년 3월 24일자 기사이다.

코로나19의 발생과 확산에 대하여 한국의 주요 언론은 정부의 미흡한 대처에 대해 보도한 바 있다.

특히 문재인 대통령에 대한 비난이 강하게 일어났는데, =

가장 큰 원인은 코로나가 본격적으로 확산되기 이전인 1월 26일, 문재인 대통령의 대국민 메시지에서

"국민들께서도 정부를 믿고 필요한 조치에 대해 과도한 불안을 갖지 마실 것을 당부드린다"라는 발언 때문인 듯하다.

이때까지만 해도 국내에서는 확진자가 3명 뿐이었다.

https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=004&oid=215&aid=0000842058

문 대통령, '우한 폐렴' 대국민 메시지…"과도한 불안 말길"

여기에 더해 영화 "기생충"팀을 청와대에 초청하여 만찬(?)을 한 사진도 국민 정서에 영향을 끼쳤다고 보인다.

관련 보도나 사진은 검색창에 "문재인 짜파구리"를 치면 얼마든지 찾을 수 있다.

 

이후 코로나19 확진자 수의 급증과 신천지라는 집단의 출현, 이리저리 짜집기된 사진들과 함께 수많은 가십거리들이 논란과 불안을 증폭시켰고 결국 청와대 국민청원에 대통령 탄핵 청원까지 올라오게 된다. 청원수가 100만을 넘었단다.

https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=025&aid=0002979299

"文대통령 탄핵" 청원 100만 돌파···靑 "정리된 답변 내놓겠다"

무엇이든 사람이 하는 일에는 동기와 목적이 있을 것이다. 

시간을 내어 사진을 오리고 붙이고, 비방글을 쓰고 실어나르고를 왜 하는 것일까?

순수하게 화가 나고 분노가 치밀어서 할 수도 있겠다.

하지만 그런 경우라면 더 심각할 수도 있다. 본인이 무엇에 휘둘리고 있는건지 모르는 경우일 확률이 높기 때문이다.

정치적으로 누구를 지지하고 반대하기 위해 이런 글을 쓰는 것은 아니다.

어차피 이곳은 거의 나 혼자만의 공간이고 읽는 사람도 없다.

(심지어 나는 현 대통령을 뽑지 않았다.)

 

맨 앞에 언급한 뉴욕타임즈의 기사를 읽어 보니

한발 떨어져서 볼 필요가 있다는 생각이 든다. 물론 이 기사도 사람이 쓴 것이고 주관이 들어간 것이긴 하다.

지금 상황에서 누굴 비방하거나 비난한다고 해서 무엇이 개선될 여지가 있는지도 생각해보아야 하겠다.

모든 비난을 차단한 중국과 같은 사회보다는 자유로운 비판과 의견이 가능한 한국 사회가 훨씬 건강하고 바람직하다고 생각하지만, 건설적 비판과 발전적 토론이 아니라면 현재 상황을 벗어나는데 도움이 되지 않을 뿐더러

일방적 비난과 분노 표출은 누군가의 선동에 휘말리는 것일 수 있음을 기억해야 할 것이다.

 

<신문기사 요약>

어떤 수치로 보아도 눈에 띄는 국가가 있다. 바로 한국이다.

2월말에서 3월초까지, 한국의 코로나 확진자 수는 수십명에서 수백명, 수천명으로 폭증했다.

2월 29일에는 인구 5천만의 국가에서 하루동안 909명의 확진자가 발생했다. 그러나 일주일도 지나지 않아 신규 확진자수는 반으로 줄었고, 4일만에 다시 반토막, 다음날 또 반이 되었다.

세계 각국에서는 하루 확진자수가 몇천명에 이르렀음에 비해 한국에서는 지난 일요일, 거의 한달간 최저치인 64명의 신규 확진자가 발생하였다.

이탈리아에서는 수백명의 사망자가 발생했지만 한국에서는 일간 사망자가 8명을 넘지 않았다.

현재까지 코로나의 확장을 누그러뜨린 나라는 중국과 한국 뿐이다. 특히 한국은 중국과 같은 이동과 발언에 대한 가혹한 통제 없이도, 미국이나 유럽과 같이 경제적인 손실이 되는 제재 없이도 코로나를 억제하는 성과를 이루었다.

세계적으로 코로나에 의한 사망자수가 15,000명을 넘어서자, 정부 관계자들과 전문가들은 한국에서 배우고자 면밀히 조사하기 시작했다.

......

(이하 생략)

 

<신문기사 전문>

How South Korea Flattened the Curve

The country showed that it is possible to contain the coronavirus without shutting down the economy, but experts are unsure whether its lessons can work abroad.

By Max Fisher and Choe Sang-Hun      

No matter how you look at the numbers, one country stands out from the rest: South Korea.

In late February and early March, the number of new coronavirus infections in the country exploded from a few dozen, to a few hundred, to several thousand.

At the peak, medical workers identified 909 new cases in a single day, Feb. 29, and the country of 50 million people appeared on the verge of being overwhelmed. But less than a week later, the number of new cases halved. Within four days, it halved again — and again the next day.

On Sunday, South Korea reported only 64 new cases, the fewest in nearly a month, even as infections in other countries continue to soar by the thousands daily, devastating health care systems and economies. Italy records several hundred deaths daily; South Korea has not had more than eight in a day.

South Korea is one of only two countries with large outbreaks, alongside China, to flatten the curve of new infections. And it has done so without China’s draconian restrictions on speech and movement, or economically damaging lockdowns like those in Europe and the United States.

[Read: China to ease coronavirus lockdown on Hubei two months after imposing it.]

As global deaths from the virus surge past 15,000, officials and experts worldwide are scrutinizing South Korea for lessons. And those lessons, while hardly easy, appear relatively straightforward and affordable: swift action, widespread testing and contact tracing, and critical support from citizens.

Yet other hard-hit nations did not follow South Korea’s lead. Some have begun to show interest in emulating its methods — but only after the epidemic had accelerated to the point that they may not be able to control it any time soon.

President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of Sweden have both called South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, to request details on the country’s measures, according to Mr. Moon’s office.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has hailed South Korea as demonstrating that containing the virus, while difficult, “can be done.” He urged countries to “apply the lessons learned in Korea and elsewhere.”

South Korean officials caution that their successes are tentative. A risk of resurgence remains, particularly as epidemics continue raging beyond the country’s borders.

Still, Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has repeatedly raised South Korea as a model, writing on Twitter, “South Korea is showing Covid-19 can be beat with smart, aggressive public health.”

Lesson 1: Intervene Fast, Before It’s a Crisis

Just one week after the country’s first case was diagnosed in late January, government officials met with representatives from several medical companies. They urged the companies to begin immediately developing coronavirus test kits for mass production, promising emergency approval.

Within two weeks, though South Korea’s confirmed cases remained in the double digits, thousands of test kits were shipping daily. The country now produces 100,000 kits per day, and officials say they are in talks with 17 foreign governments about exporting them.

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Officials also swiftly imposed emergency measures in Daegu, a city of 2.5 million where contagion spread fast through a local church.

“South Korea could deal with this without limiting the movement of people because we knew the main source of infection, the church congregation, pretty early on,” said Ki Mo-ran, an epidemiologist advising the government’s coronavirus response. “If we learned about it later than we did, things could have been far worse.”

South Koreans, unlike Europeans and Americans, were also primed to treat the coronavirus as a national emergency, after a 2015 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in the country killed 38.

The coronavirus is thought to have a five-day incubation period, often followed by a period of mild symptoms that could be mistaken for a cold, when the virus is highly communicable. This pattern creates a lag of a week or two before an outbreak becomes apparent. What looks like a handful of cases can be hundreds; what looks like hundreds can be thousands.

“Such characteristics of the virus render the traditional response, which emphasizes lockdown and isolation, ineffective,” said Kim Gang-lip, South Korea’s vice health minister. “Once it arrives, the old way is not effective in stopping the disease from spreading.”

Lesson 2: Test Early, Often and Safely

South Korea has tested far more people for the coronavirus than any other country, enabling it to isolate and treat many people soon after they are infected.

The country has conducted over 300,000 tests, for a per-capita rate more than 40 times that of the United States.

“Testing is central because that leads to early detection, it minimizes further spread and it quickly treats those found with the virus,” Kang Kyung-wha, South Korea’s foreign minister, told the BBC, calling the tests “the key behind our very low fatality rate as well.”

Though South Korea is sometimes portrayed as having averted an epidemic, thousands of people were infected and the government was initially accused of complacency. Its approach to testing was designed to turn back an outbreak already underway.

To spare hospitals and clinics from being overwhelmed, officials opened 600 testing centers designed to screen as many people as possible, as quickly as possible — and keep health workers safe by minimizing contact.

At 50 drive-through stations, patients are tested without leaving their cars. They are given a questionnaire, a remote temperature scan and a throat swab. The process takes about 10 minutes. Test results are usually back within hours.

At some walk-in centers, patients enter a chamber resembling a transparent phone booth. Health workers administer throat swabs using thick rubber gloves built into the chamber’s walls.

Relentless public messaging urges South Koreans to seek testing if they or someone they know develop symptoms. Visitors from abroad are required to download a smartphone app that guides them through self-checks for symptoms.

Offices, hotels and other large buildings often use thermal image cameras to identify people with fevers. Many restaurants check customers’ temperatures before accepting them.

Lesson 3: Contact Tracing, Isolation and Surveillance

When someone tests positive, health workers retrace the patient’s recent movements to find, test — and, if necessary, isolate — anyone the person may have had contact with, a process known as contact tracing.

This allows health workers to identify networks of possible transmission early, carving the virus out of society like a surgeon removing a cancer.

South Korea developed tools and practices for aggressive contact tracing during the MERS outbreak. Health officials would retrace patients’ movements using security camera footage, credit card records, even GPS data from their cars and cellphones.

“We did our epidemiological investigations like police detectives,” Dr. Ki said. “Later, we had laws revised to prioritize social security over individual privacy at times of infectious disease crises.”

As the coronavirus outbreak grew too big to track patients so intensively, officials relied more on mass messaging.

South Koreans’ cellphones vibrate with emergency alerts whenever new cases are discovered in their districts. Websites and smartphone apps detail hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute, timelines of infected people’s travel — which buses they took, when and where they got on and off, even whether they were wearing masks.

People who believe they may have crossed paths with a patient are urged to report to testing centers.

South Koreans have broadly accepted the loss of privacy as a necessary trade-off.

People ordered into self-quarantine must download another app, which alerts officials if a patient ventures out of isolation. Fines for violations can reach $2,500.

By identifying and treating infections early, and segregating mild cases to special centers, South Korea has kept hospitals clear for the most serious patients. Its case fatality rate is just over one percent, among the lowest in the world.

Lesson 4: Enlist The Public’s Help

There aren’t enough health workers or body-temperature scanners to track everybody, so everyday people must pitch in.

Leaders concluded that subduing the outbreak required keeping citizens fully informed and asking for their cooperation, said Mr. Kim, the vice health minister.

Television broadcasts, subway station announcements and smartphone alerts provide endless reminders to wear face masks, pointers on social distancing and the day’s transmission data.

The messaging instills a near-wartime sense of common purpose. Polls show majority approval for the government’s efforts, with confidence high, panic low and scant hoarding.

“This public trust has resulted in a very high level of civic awareness and voluntary cooperation that strengthens our collective effort,” Lee Tae-ho, the vice minister of foreign affairs, told reporters earlier this month.

Officials also credit the country’s nationalized health care system, which guarantees most care, and special rules covering coronavirus-related costs, as giving even people with no symptoms greater incentive to get tested.

Is The Korean Model Transferable?

For all the attention to South Korea’s successes, its methods and containment tools are not prohibitively complex or expensive.

Some of the technology the country has used is as simple as specialized rubber gloves and cotton swabs. Of the seven countries with worse outbreaks than South Korea’s, five are richer.

Experts cite three major hurdles to following South Korea’s lead, none related to cost or technology.

One is political will. Many governments have hesitated to impose onerous measures in the absence of a crisis-level outbreak.

Another is public will. Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies beset by polarization and populist backlash.

But time poses the greatest challenge. It may be “too late,” Dr. Ki said, for countries deep into epidemics to control outbreaks as quickly or efficiently as South Korea has.

China turned back the catastrophic first outbreak in Hubei, a province larger than most European countries, though at the cost of shutting down its economy.

South Korea’s methods could help the United States, though “we probably lost the chance to have an outcome like South Korea,” Mr. Gottlieb, the former F.D.A. commissioner, wrote on Twitter. “We must do everything to avert the tragic suffering being borne by Italy.”

Max Fisher reported from New York, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea.